I built a castle (out of all the bricks they threw at me)
by MedusaOfTheSpecies
Summary: She has spent her entire life dreaming of this: Isolt Sayre, Ilvermorny, and an empire that lasts forever. :: Written for round 2 of QLFC


**Written for QFLC round 2:** _(Setting)_ Ilvermorny, _(word)_ past, _(quote)_ "If you leave now, you get nothing," _(word)_ contagious

 **Position/Team:** Chaser 3 for the Appleby Arrows

 **Final word count:** 938 words (google docs)

Huge thanks to Sam, Lexi, Jade, and Jill for being fantastic betas. You guys are amazing!

 ** _X_**

Ilvermorny is a safe haven long before it is a castle and she is its queen regardless.

( _Certain things have never changed and she holds onto her goals like they're something that can be lost)_

 **X**

Childhood wraps around her like a blanket and she blooms, a butterfly emerging from her cocoon. Her parents are kind before they are smart and loyal before they are ambitious.

She spends her nights by the blazing fire and listens to her parent's stories. Hogwarts is always her favorite tale by far.

"Soon," Her mother says when she expresses impatience about the age limit. What makes you more worthy at eleven? Is she not good enough for Hogwarts now?

It is never soon enough for her.

"I want to make my own school, far grander," Isolt says spitefully, and her mother and father smile apprehensively.

Even at eight, she is a peculiar child, with eyes far too observant and a brilliant mind. They say she is sharper than the edge of a sword's blade and perhaps they are right.

"Well, maybe you will," her Mother says patiently, forcing a smile.

There is no maybe about it, not when Isolt has long since decided. Destiny has nothing over her ambition. "I will call it Ilvermorny."

Her parents exchange looks. "As long as you're certain."

 _(She is)_

 **X**

The end of an era goes like this: the fire burns down her house like a blazing inferno and part of her heart and soul goes with it.

 **X**

Her aunt likes watching things burn, gleeful and vengeful as the ashes fall at her feet.

They may look alike _(black hair and sharp glares),_ but Isolt hates her aunt. When her aunt screams the unforgivable curse and it feels like a thousand burning knives are stabbing into her soul, Isolt tastes hatred in her mouth for the first time, and it tastes like blood.

Her aunt believes in blood purity and legacies. Isolt does not want anyone's legacy but her own.

Ilvermorny will be her legacy. She can feel it in every vein of her bruised and bleeding body.

"If you leave, you get nothing," Her aunt mocks when she catches her watching the exits.

 _(Isolt wants nothing of her aunt's blood-stained legacy anyways)_

Isolt retreats inside her mind and goes into her safe haven during those days: Ilvermorny will be a castle made from ruins.

 **X**

Her escape is anti-climactic: a grapple for a wand and the sound of her footsteps as she leaves her former prison.

( _She doesn't ever look back)_

She boards the Mayflower with a thousand muggles and disappears off of it when they arrive at shore without a single person noticing.

( _It's time)_

And if everything goes wrong after that- _a pukwudgie with a stubborn heart and a defiant mind, two magical children she cannot abandon, and a muggle boy who will not leave her side-_ at least she has her dreams.

 _(In her dreams, a castle puts itself together brick by brick.)_

 **X**

It's not what she expected, there is no castle but her home, but it's more than she has ever imagined.

Because there are _children_ here who know nothing more of pain then a scrape, who think of magic as a toy rather than a weapon, who want nothing more than to learn.

She's finally home, standing in a cottage that falls apart in the freezing winters. It's the beginning of an empire and she's never felt joy like this before.

 **X**

When her aunt comes, she is ready. This is her home, a school built on defiance and childhood dreams.

She knows every inch of her home; where her husband will laugh at the latest crack in the wall from an overexcited child, where her babies will sleep, what mischief the boys have gotten into in this corner, every classroom and door.

This has been her dream since she was eight. She is the only survivor of a childhood past catastrophe.

This is her home, her school, her safe haven, and as she stands on its floors, she knows she'll die for this.

( _But instead she lives and goodness, it's glorious)_

 **X**

She's dreamed of this her entire life, turning her school into a real place from a daydream, but it's no longer just hers.

Ilvermorny does not belong to a stubborn girl or a vicious teenager, nor to an adult that has been through hell and came back.

It belongs to the kids that walk its sacred halls every day as she watches from the alcoves; the kids who bow down to her marble statue out of respect and not duty.

It's a smug statement at every person who ever doubted her. Ilvermorny is the first school where houses are based on what you value but never about who you currently are.

( _She, out of all people, knows that people can change)_

( _Ilvermorny goes down in history and really, who's surprised?)_

 **X**

" _As might be expected of a school part-founded by a No-Maj, Ilvermorny has the reputation of being one of the most democratic, least elitist of all the great wizarding schools._

 _This can be credited to Isolt Sayre, a descendant of both Hogwarts founder Salazar Slytherin and the famous Morrigan, whose desire to educate and love for knowledge was contagious, changing wizarding school in America for generations to come."_

 _-A History of Wizarding Education, 2017 Edition_


End file.
